Today I’m taking a little break and handing over to Emily Waddell, an advocate of simple and natural beauty. We’ve all read the beauty magazines touting expensive chemical filled lotions and potions with fancy scientific names, and seen celebrities endorsing 10-step skincare routines, but are these things necessary for good skin, or are there other more environmentally friendly (and purse friendly) solutions? Questioning some long standing beauty industry beliefs, Emily seeks to separate fact from fiction:

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Don’t you just hate your skin sometimes?

You’re getting ready to go out on a date and bam, your skin decides that your acne from when you were fourteen was your best look. It’s your best friend’s wedding and bam, your skin is so oily your face looks like you’re working on a tan in Miami rather than being in a cold church in Sussex. Sometimes your skin can be nice to you and you attribute it to your new skincare routine, or that £50 moisturiser you just bought, but how much of what you’re doing is helping your skin? Are you actually hurting it and the environment? Let’s look and see if we can separate beauty industry fact from fiction:

Myth or Fact One: Face wipes are okay as long as you use gentle/sensitive ones.

Face wipes are the lazy girls make-up remover.

I am 100% one of those girls. There is nothing less appealing than coming home from a night of drinking and staring in the mirror at your blurry face and attempting to take your make-up off with a cleanser. Grabbing a face wipe and preforming a circular motion and then immediately crawling into bed seems like a much easier and better option.

Unfortunately face wipes are awful for your skin, even the gentle ones. Face wipes contain very harsh chemicals that dry out your skin. Even the gentle ones shouldn’t be used around the sensitive eye area. They’re also terrible for the environment as they contribute to landfill. Lazy girls of the world, dump the face wipes and buy a cleanser and a flannel: your skin and the environment will thank you. If you are a crocheter, you can even whip up your own reusable make-up remover pads that you can just pop in the washing machine when you’re done.

Myth or Fact Two: You need to buy a whole range of facial skincare products for your skin to look it’s best.

Have you ever gone round a friend’s house and wanted to steal everything in their bathroom?

They have so many beautiful looking creams and potions you just want to ignore the dinner party and jump in the bath and use them all. Then you look closer and realise that they’re all for their face. Really? This is just for you face? A skincare routine should consist of two or three steps maximum, and that’s only if you have particularly problem skin.

Don’t spend your entire life in the bathroom. As well as wasting time and money, you’re probably harming your skin using so many different products. Pick one or two products that make your face look glorious and leave it alone! Napiers skin care range includes natural based products that can be used for face and body and are my personal preference for glowy skin. Keep it simple folks.

Myth or Fact: Expensive is best

We know that beauty products can get ridiculously crazy expensive but it seems that some organic and natural beauty brands have cottoned on to the fact that buyers are willing to pay big bucks to go au naturale too.

Some people who tout the benefits of ‘natural beauty’ will never admit the price of some of their skin care products. They don’t use the obviously expensive brands like Chanel, but instead the ones that chant the cause of a natural beauty regime. This makes it okay to spend £60 on a facial scrub because it has beeswax in it. “It’s natural!” they scream at me as they defend the price of the whole beeswax set they’ve just bought, not knowing that they are probably just smearing over-priced honey on their face, or paying big bucks just for fancy packaging. Don’t feel the need to spend an awful lot of money on fancily packaged natural skincare products; the whole idea of them is that they are simple with little ingredients and in recyclable packaging.

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What do you think? Do you think expensive is best, or that you need several lotions and cleansers and toners for your skin to look it’s best? Or do you agree with Emily? And have we missed anything out? Do share your thoughts in the comments section below.

If you are reading this post on a laptop, tablet or mobile phone at home then chances are you have a wireless router, so tip number five is another quick and easy one that anyone with a router can do:

Switch it off : it’s as simple as that. But wait – not right now! I wouldn’t want you to miss out on the rest of this article: but instead get into the habit of switching if off when you go out and go to bed.

I would never dream of leaving my laptop switched on when I’m not using it, but that thinking never quite applied to my router. I never switched off our router, ever, until very recently. Mostly this was due to a mix of laziness and because I had always wondered whether you should switch off your router at night or not, and had a long-standing belief that switching off your router was damaging to it (so do quite a few people it seems). Then I had a bit of lightbulb moment, and thought why would they put an on/off switch on most models of router if you weren’t meant to switch them off? So now I’m slowly getting into the habit of switching it off.

I personally wouldn’t switch off my router every time I finished using the internet because in our house we are quite heavy internet users – between listening to music, my toddler demanding to watch “Pat” (Postman Pat) on YouTube, searching for random information on the internet throughout the day, checking emails, writing blog posts, and so forth. So in that sense it might be damaging to the router to keep switching it on and off throughout the day, but switching it off at night when you go to bed, and when you go out certainly won’t hurt. And it’ll save a bit of energy, and money, which is never a bad thing.

I won’t lie: you won’t save a tremendous amount of energy or money individually (maybe a few pounds a year) but if everyone in the UK collectively got into this habit we would save a massive amount of energy and carbon – so spread the word!

Hello

I'm Wendy and welcome to Moral Fibres, my green lifestyle blog. I believe that sustainable living should be hip, not hippie. If you do too then you'll love it here! In the blog you'll find all sorts of thrifty and easy hints and tips for living a greener life that won't compromise your sense of style.